Tracking Downtown Toronto's Amazing Building Boom.

Category Archives: Murano condos

Bay Street condo and apartment towers stand in silhouette under fiery orange clouds during tonight’s sunset (as seen from my balcony east of Jarvis Street). The buildings topped by construction cranes are the two U Condos towers at Bay and St Mary Streets (far right) and the FIVE Condos tower at Yonge and St Joseph Streets (second from right). Bookending the view at far left are the Murano and Burano condo towers at Bay and Grosvenor Streets.

August 15 2011: A wood panel indicates where glass broke and fell onto Bay Street from a balcony on the south Murano condo tower this morning

August 15 2011: Police closed the east traffic lane and sidewalk on Bay Street, as well as the intersection of Bay and Grenville Streets, after broken glass from a Murano condo balcony panel plunged to the ground and hit a passerby

August 15 2011: The driving restrictions cause traffic chaos on Bay Street below the Murano towers at 3 p.m. as police wait for crews to install scaffolding on the sidewalks. A pedestrian was injured by falling glass three hours earlier.

South tower’s turn: Local news media are reporting that a pedestrian suffered minor injuries this morning after she was struck by pieces of broken glass that fell from a balcony panel on the south Murano condo tower at the corner of Bay and Grenville Streets.

The woman was hurt shortly before noon when a glass panel shattered on an upper-floor balcony on the tower’s northwest corner, showering pieces of glass onto Bay Street. Although reports provide conflicting information about the nature of the woman’s injuries — with some stories saying she sustained injuries to her arm, and others describing a hand injury — all media accounts say the injury was minor and not life-threatening. Although it’s fortunate the woman wasn’t seriously hurt, the incident is bound to raise serious concerns about the safety of glass balcony panels not only because it marks the second time in three days that glass has shattered on a downtown condo tower, but because it’s at least the fourth tower to experience problems with panel breakage so far this summer.

On Saturday afternoon, a panel plunged off a 32nd-floor balcony at the recently-opened One Bedford condo tower in the Annex. According to an online Toronto Star report, police said “no-one was injured when the single, large pane of glass fell, bounced off the front-door overhang and smashed onto the ground” around 2.25 p.m. Police closed Bedford Road from Bloor Street to Prince Arthur Avenue for several hours while the incident was investigated. The broken panel was replaced with a temporary wood replacement (see photos below).

On August 2, a balcony panel on the Festival Tower condo highrise shattered and fell onto John Street. Nobody was hurt in that incident, but police closed John Street between King and Adelaide Streets as a precaution until Festival Tower’s developer, The Daniels Corporation, could get safety scaffolding installed on the sidewalk. Another panel had broken on Festival Tower only three weeks before that.

On August 1, two panels shattered and fell from the north Murano condo tower at the corner of Bay and Grosvenor Streets. Those incidents occurred mere days after City of Toronto building inspectors ordered Murano’s developer, Lanterra Developments, to remove and replace all of the balcony panels and railings from the north tower. That tower has been plagued with balcony breakage; in fact, the city ordered Lanterra to undertake the balcony remediation program after two panels broke and fell from the north tower on July 21. Panels had previously fallen from that tower on several separate occasions during the past year. Lanterra, incidentally, was One Bedford’s developer.

I have published extensive information and photos from previous balcony glass breakage incidents in earlier blog reports, including posts on August 4 2011, July 28 2011, July 21 2011, June 21 2011, February 2 2011, and January 18 2011. Below are photos I have taken in the past several days at Festival Tower and One Bedford, along with more pics I took this afternoon following the latest Murano panel break.

August 12 2011: Looking up the east side of Festival Tower, from which a balcony panel fell to the ground on John Street on August 2

August 12 2011: The circle indicates the Festival Tower balcony from which a glass panel plunged and smashed into pieces on John Street on August 2

August 12 2011: The broken panel has been replaced with a new one which appears to be a slightly different shade than the originals on the tower

July 13 2011: Looking up the west side of the One Bedford condo tower. On Saturday, a glass panel fell from a 32nd floor balcony on this side of the building.

August 14 2011: A piece of wood is temporarily replacing the glass panel that broke and fell from this One Bedford balcony on Saturday

August 14 2011: A closer view of the One Bedford condo balcony from which a glass panel fell on the weekend. Fortunately, no-one was hurt.

August 12 2011: The north side of the north Murano condo tower, from which all balcony glass panels, dividers and railings have been removed on order by the City of Toronto. The removal and replacement project will cost the condo building’s developer, Lanterra Developments, millions of dollars.

August 12 2011: The north Murano tower, sans balcony panels and railings, and the south tower rising behind it on Grenville Street

August 12 2011: Scaffolding protects the sidewalk outside the north Murano condo tower. For more than a week after the late July incidents, north tower residents had to enter their building through the south tower.

August 12 2011: Panels have been removed from about two thirds of the balconies on the south side of the Murano north tower

August 12 2011: Another view of the south side of the Murano north tower

August 12 2011: A closer look at the balconies from which glass has been removed on the north tower’s south face

August 15 2011: The two Murano condo towers, viewed this afternoon from the the SW corner of Bay and Grenville Streets. For the past two weeks, crews have been removing glass panels and railings from balconies on the north tower (left). Today, a panel fell off the south tower (right) for the first time.

August 15 2011: Glass shattered and fell this morning from a balcony (circled) on the upper northwest corner of the Murano south condo tower

August 15 2011: A replacement wooden panel has temporarily been installed on the balcony from which the glass fell this morning

August 15 2011: Another view of the replacement wooden panel

August 15 2011: A closer look at the balcony panel from which the broken glass fell

… as crews remove hundreds of glass panels from the building’s balconies. On orders from City inspectors, the developer is replacing all of the panels.

Balcony blues: Residents of the Murano north condo tower at 37 Grosvenor Street won’t be able to watch summer sunsets from the comfort of their balconies for the rest of the summer … and might not even be able to walk out onto them until sometime this fall. After two glass panels fell off balconies and smashed onto Grosvenor Street last Thursday, city building inspectors ordered Murano management to keep residents off their balconies until all glass panels have been removed and replaced, the Toronto Star reported. Murano’s builder, Lanterra Developments, began the remediation work immediately, and will foot what is bound to be a substantial bill for the project.

Last week’s incident marked the third time this year that glass panels have fallen from the highrise onto the street. In the latest mishap, panels plunged from north-facing balconies on the 18th and 35th floors. The panels fell around 2 p.m. on one of the hottest and most humid afternoons of the summer. Environment Canada data show that the temperature at Pearson International Airport at the time was 37.1 Celsius, while the Humidex reading was 48. Winds were around 35 km/h.

Fortunately, no-one was injured. Nevertheless, as I reported in my July 21 2011 post about the incident, Toronto police closed part of the street and lane below the Murano tower to all pedestrian and vehicle traffic as a safety precaution. They also required north tower residents and visitors to access and exit the building through the south condo tower at 38 Grenville Street, even though scaffolding had already been installed over the Bay and Grosvenor Street sidewalks adjacent to the north tower after a balcony panel fell from the tower’s upper south side in late June.

After inspecting the north tower, staff from the City’s building division issued an order requiring that all glass balcony panels in that particular building be replaced. According to the Star, the order demanded that building management “remove the glass balcony panels from the building, remove all contents from all balconies and secure all points of access to all balconies until the remediation is complete.”

As of yesterday afternoon, work crews had removed most of the glass panels on the lower seven rows of balconies, and the sections of Grosvenor Street and St Vincent Lane alongside the building still remained off-limits to pedestrians and vehicles.

July 24 2011: Plywood panels are visible on two of the upper floor balconies of the north Murano condo tower in this view from Wellesley Street West. A swing stage carrying a work crew also can be seen on the lower left side of the building.

July 24 2011: A work crew inspects balcony panels from a swing stage near the northeast corner of the 37-storey tower

July 24 2011: Two contractors look down from one balcony while another crew works on the balcony below them

July 24 2011: The workers appear to be checking a glass balcony divider

July 27 2011: A crew ascends the building exterior where dozens of glass panels have already been removed from the balcony railings

July 21 2011: Plywood sheets indicate where glass balcony panels have broken on the north side of the Murano North condo tower. The lower piece of plywood has been in place for at least a week. The upper panel shattered this afternoon.

… while another cruiser and more tape block access to the laneway that runs between Grenville and Grosvenor Streets on the east side of the Murano towers

Murano glass rains again: Toronto police closed part of Grosvenor Street as a safety precaution today after at least one glass balcony panel on the North Murano condo tower shattered, raining thousands of pieces of tempered glass onto the road and sidewalk below. Police and building security guards also barred residents and visitors from entering and exiting the North tower’s front doors on Grosvenor, requiring them to use the South Murano tower entrance at 38 Grenville Street instead.

Today’s incident marks at least the fifth time that a balcony panel has broken and sprayed pieces of glass onto the streets and sidewalks below the two-tower complex on the east side of Bay Street, between Grosvenor and Grenville Streets. Exactly one month ago, I reported that the Bay Street sidewalk outside the Murano towers had been taped off after glass fell from a balcony on the upper south side of the North building. See my June 21 2011 post for full details and photos of that incident, along with links to other photos, posts and local news coverage reporting on previous incidents of balcony glass falling from the tower.

Early this evening I received word from Matt, a reader of TheTorontoBlog.com, that glass had fallen from the skyscraper yet again. “Another 2 panels fell out today, one in the alley way next to the condos and the other right on Grovesnor St from level 37,” he told me. (The Murano North tower is 37 storeys tall; the South tower has 45 floors.)

I grabbed my camera and walked over to take a look. Just as Matt had advised, police had completely blocked vehicular and pedestrian traffic on Grosvenor Street, from the west side of the YMCA building over to Bay Street, as well as along St Vincent Lane — an alley which runs between Grosvenor and Grenville Streets on the east side of the Murano complex. Tiny pieces of broken tempered glass littered the concrete sidewalks and asphalt road surface throughout the closed-off area. I saw people standing on several North Tower balconies, leaning against the railings while watching the police and pedestrians on the street below them.

Over at the northeast corner of Bay and Grosvenor, two security guards were busy looking up and warning people to get off their balconies and go back inside their condos. “Get inside! Get off the balcony! Get away from the balcony!” one of the guards screamed at a woman leaning over a balcony about 15 floors high.

When I approached a policeman and one of the security guards and asked if anyone had been hurt by the falling glass, the officer just shrugged and said he didn’t know. The security guard, pointing to scaffolding that covers the Grosvenor Street sidewalk outside the condo building, said he didn’t think there had been any injuries. (A work crew had been installing additional scaffolding over the sidewalk when I walked past Murano on Tuesday morning.)

I also asked if more than one balcony panel had broken, since I couldn’t see any signs of a broken panel on the east side of the condo complex above St. Vincent Lane. However, neither the security guard nor the police officer knew if more than one panel had shattered. (A story in tonight’s online edition of the Toronto Star says that glass from two separate balconies fell to the ground.) As well, neither man knew if the condo management or developer would be taking steps to inspect and/or replace every balcony panel on the building. They also didn’t know how long the street and sidewalks were expected to stay closed; however, the Star story says the road will be closed until Monday.

As a result of today’s incident, I’m willing to bet that scaffolding will remain on the sidewalks around the Murano buildings for the rest of the summer, if not longer, while the cause of the glass breakage is investigated.

Murano isn’t the only downtown highrise building that has experienced problems with breaking balcony panels. As I reported in a February 2 2011 post, at least one panel has broken on the 46-storey Casa condominium tower on Charles Street East. And just a couple of weeks ago I spotted a piece of plywood on a balcony at one of the new apartment buildings in Regent Park; photos of that appear below. Also below are additional photos of the Murano condo from this evening and recent weeks.

June 26 2011: A piece of plywood replaces a balcony panel on the upper south side of the Murano North condo tower

June 26 2011 : A closer view of the missing balcony panel on the north tower

June 26 2011: Scaffolding on Bay Street outside the Murano condos

June 26 2011: Scaffolding on Grosvenor Street outside the Murano north tower

July 15 2011: Plywood replaces a balcony panel on the Murano north tower

July 15 2011: Another view of the panel missing on the north tower’s north side

July 21 2011: Bay Street view of two missing panels on Murano’s north tower

July 21 2011: The closed section of Grosvenor Street outside the Murano tower

July 21 2011: Curious Murano north tower residents looking off their balcony

3:15 p.m.: “Caution” tape blocks the east sidewalk on Bay Street, seen here looking south from Grosvenor toward Grenville Street. A security guard told me the sidewalk was closed as a safety precaution after glass fell from one of the Murano condo towers sometime today.

Overhead dangers: The sky isn’t falling this week, but you can forgive many Toronto motorists and pedestrians for thinking that it is. Yesterday, a 10-pound chunk of concrete fell from the Gardiner Expressway onto Lake Shore Boulevard near Bathurst Street, forcing the temporary closure of two lanes of traffic while crews cleaned the road and inspected the elevated expressway for additional loose pieces. (Further information about that is available in a Toronto Star article published today as well as a story that appeared in yesterday’s Globe and Mail.) Then, sometime today, glass apparently fell from one of the Murano condo towers on Bay Street, forcing building management to tape off pedestrian access to most of the sidewalk on the east side of Bay between Grosvenor and Grenville Streets as a safety measure.

Today’s broken glass/sidewalk closure incident is the latest in a series that have occurred at the popular downtown condominium complex for more than a year. A project of Lanterra Developments, Murano is a pair of attractive glass and steel condo towers that soar 45 and 37 storeys above the east side of Bay Street, between Grosvenor to the north and Grenville to the south. As I reported in a January 18 2011 post, there were three occasions last year on which glass balcony panels either shattered or loosened and fell from the towers. In April 2010, a balcony panel apparently plunged from one of the towers, smashing and cracking several panes of a glass canopy that extends along the condo building exterior above the Bay Street sidewalk. When two more balcony panels broke last September the local media took note, with the Toronto Star publishing a September 18 2010 report headlined “Shattered glass rains down from condo tower.” Just before Christmas, I noticed that a balcony panel on the south side of the North Tower had been replaced with a piece of wood, while in late January I saw a board on yet another balcony on the other side of the same tower (see my February 2 2011 post for photos of that, as well as pics of a temporary wood panel on a balcony at the 46-storey Casa Condominium on Charles Street East). There were no reports of injuries in any of the incidents. For most of 2010 and much of this past winter, however, scaffolding was kept in place to protect pedestrians using the sidewalks outside the Murano towers. Meanwhile, replacements for the broken and cracked panels on the canopy above the sidewalk were not installed until sometime in April of this year.

Early in May, I noticed that most of the scaffolding had been removed from the sidewalks, while just a week or two back I saw that the sidewalks were completely clear for the first time in many months. When I was heading north on Bay Street in midafternoon today, however, I encountered yellow and red “caution” tape that had been strung across the trees in front of the Murano complex, blocking most of the sidewalk from pedestrian use. Only a narrow section, with barely enough room for two pedestrians to pass each other, remained open alongside the curb. A disabled man in a motorized wheelchair came along and noticed, to his chagrin, that the section of sidewalk still open for passage was not wide enough for his chair. He proceeded to drive under the “caution” tape, which snagged on his headrest and ripped away from the trees as he rode up the middle of the sidewalk. A security guard wearing a white hardhat came racing toward him, gesturing for the man to drive his wheelchair along the edge of the sidewalk next to the road. “You can’t go up here! It’s dangerous!” he warned.

When I asked why the sidewalk was taped off, the security guard said it was because “glass fell from the tower.” He did not know whether the glass had fallen from a broken window or a balcony panel. All he could tell me was that glass had fallen to the street and the sidewalk had been cordoned off as a safety precaution. “It’s very dangerous for you here,” he told me, before scurrying down the street to replace the tape that had been torn loose by the wheelchair (several pedestrians had started walking up the middle of the sidewalk since the tape was no longer in place to indicate it was off-limits.) I didn’t see broken glass anywhere on the sidewalks; if there had been any, it had already been swept up. A police car was parked on Grosvenor outside the entrance to the Murano North Tower but, apart from the “caution” tape, there was nothing to suggest anything “dangerous” had happened. Nevertheless, I wonder if I’ll once again see scaffolding above the sidewalk next time I walk past the Muranos?

Below are two more pics showing the taped-off sidewalk today, along with photos I took during the winter of the missing and cracked canopy panels and their replacements.

Catching up to its cousins: The Burano condo tower, left, is slowly but surely closing in on the height of the two Murano condo towers on the opposite side of Bay Street. When topped off at 48 floors, Burano will be the tallest of the bunch — Murano North is 35 storeys, while Murano South is 45. All three condo towers, seen here on March 25 2011, are projects of Lanterra Developments.

Heads up! You don’t usually see scaffolding erected around a brand-new condominium tower to protect passing pedestrians after construction has finished and the building is fully occupied. But then, you don’t usually expect glass panels to shatter and fall off the balconies of new buildings, either. Yet that’s what seems to have happened four separate times in the past year at the Murano condos on Bay Street.

Designed by architectsAlliance of Toronto, Murano is a complex of two glass highrise buildings that opened in 2009: a 35-floor North Tower on Grosvenor Street and a 45-storey South Tower on Grenville Street, both linked by a two-storey podium extending along Bay Street.

According to posts in an online Toronto architecture and building forum, a glass panel broke loose from a balcony in early April of last year. It plunged to the ground, in the process shattering several other glass panels that create a canopy above Bay Street to protect pedestrians from rain and the elements. The sidewalk around the damaged panels was cordoned off with yellow safety warning tape while repairs were performed.

A similar incident occurred in September, when a tempered glass panel shattered and fell from an upper-level balcony on the Grenville Street side of the North Tower. Several days later, glass from another panel shattered and showered to the ground from a different North Tower balcony, also on the Grenville Street side. That incident made headlines in local papers; for example, the Toronto Star reported on glass falling from the Murano tower in a story on September 18.

The broken panels were replaced with sheets of wood while new panels were ordered; meanwhile, condo management called engineers in to try to determine what had caused the panels to break.

In early December, I noticed that the wood sheets were gone and the missing glass panels had finally been replaced; however, around December 21, another balcony panel shattered. Again, it was on a North Tower balcony, but this time on the south side. Scaffolding has protected sidewalks around the condo complex ever since, and up until the end of last week a piece of wood was still visible on the balcony in question. When I passed by this morning, however, the wood was gone and a new glass panel was in place; in fact, I could see a contractor working on the balcony, so he may have just finished the installation. On the other hand, the glass overhang above street level was still missing three panels.

The problem must be a source of embarrassment and frustration for the building’s developer, Lanterra Developments, which operates a customer service centre for its various condominium projects in a street-level office in the Murano podium along Bay Street (now partially obscured by the scaffolding).

But shattered glass hasn’t been the only thing dropping from the Murano towers. In a gruesome accident in May 2008, falling metal debris killed a 55-year-old construction worker while the complex was being built; details are provided in this Toronto Starstory. And on March 15 last year, a man jumped to his death from a unit on the east side of the building. Could ghosts of the two deceased be responsible for the falling glass? Or is it merely a case of balcony panel defects or improper installation techniques?

It will be interesting to see how long the scaffolding remains in place; it really detracts from the streetscape and spoils views of the podium. Fortunately, it doesn’t block the colourful decorated glass windows (created by Toronto photographer Barbara Astman) on the podium’s second floor.